What do you guys think of last Adobe move? Personally, I do not like the subscription license model, if not as an optional solution. There's no relevant advantage that can make me accept the idea of not being able to stick with an older version and stop paying.

Also, it seems to me they are di facto (willingly or unwillingly) targeting hobbyists, which is in my view silly on their part. I bet piracy WILL increase because of this move.

It's not being met well in the professional circles I'm part of (VFX & games).

For my personal needs, the open source alternatives are sufficient, so Adobe already wasn't getting any of my money.

I'm curious what you're using. Gimp doesn't do it for me, and I've seen nothing approaching Lightroom's functionality and ease-of-use in any open source library management apps.

There's a quick Poll on dpreview.com :

All the options they list do entirely apply to me. This is a bad move on Adobe's part.

I think Adobe have shot themselves in the foot recently and they are looking for a way out.

None of the photographers I know are willing to pay £££ for photoshop anymore, so we don't. I have CS3 and it is fine for what I do with it. Every (and I mean every) professional photographer has Lightroom as part of their workflow now, it does 99% of the work I do to my pictures and it's an application that costs around £100.

I think their subscription model is a good one to be honest, I think it's a little over priced at the moment, I'l like to see it at regular price of around £30 per month and then I would bite.

Adobe software has always been widely pirated mainly due to cost, I think this subscription model could actually help Adobe with that problem, time will tell...

Cheers

Cris

Lightroom will continue to be available for regular purchase (oh, excuse me, "perpetual license"). I occasionally use Photoshop to do things that LR can't do (automatic dust removal, layering images, complicated lighting correction, tweaking sharpness for huge prints, etc.), but it's true that I don't need any of the newer features in Photoshop to do any of that. I'm intrigued by some of Adobe's latest and greatest features (e.g., camera blur removal), but not enough to shell out the big bucks.

One of my friends absolutely loves the new subscription model. She is a professional artist and a bunch of smaller payments is easier for her to handle than a single large payment, so she can finally justify getting everything Adobe offers (equivalent of the Master Suite I guess).

I don't like the new subscription model. I'd rather pay for something once and not worry about it again, whether that means paying monthly or needing to connect to the net every 99 days to make sure I can still access the software. I don't use what I have (Production Premium Suite) very often and will probably just stick with my CS5.5 version forever.

That baffles me. If smaller payments are easier, she should put those small payments into the "CS6" fund, until she has enough money to make the single large payment. And, if she's making so little money at her profession that she can't handle a single lump-sum payment for CS6, why is she willing to pay a premium, rather than keeping that extra money in her pocket? The subscription model is only cheaper if (a) you are a habitual upgrader, or (b) you only use the stuff once every several months and can just pay for the license for the one month or so that you'll need it.

Or, can't she just finance the $1000 purchase and pay in installments (most CC will allow you to do that), and do the same upon next interestingly enough release, IF she wishes so?

As to the subscription model, I agree that it makes sense for Adobe. I honestly still don't see how it makes sense for customers, though.

Aside from the disadvantages that every one disliking the model pointed out in these days:
- Having to repeatedly pay >>to retain access<< (not to upgrade!)
- The need to occasionally connect to the internet to use the software. I understand that that is once every month or so, but still there are unfortunate events where that can be annoying.
- Dependence on future Adobe's pricing. what if they increase the price beyond what is acceptable to you?

there's something more that worries me. Unless I am misunderstanding something, you also depend on Adobe's software design evolution.

What if they come up with a new version that changes in a non-desirable way to you? Are you being forced to specific learning paths (and curves) even when you don't want to? I usually am curious and happy to test and learn new GUI or software paradigms, but many are not (rightfully so).

We had issues, in the office, when migrating hundreds of machines from Windows XP to Windows 7, because an (admittedly small) percentage of users would not "find what they needed" and call tech support, >>in spite of documentation that circulated<<.
Half the internet is criticizing Windows 8 Start Screen, an all around improved app launcher, over the horrible (to me) Start Menu which was obsolete 5 years ago with Vista, or the replacement of a start button with an easier to reach catch-all corner. While to me this makes virtually NO sense in any way, many people, probably the majority out there, see things differently. And they are "right" in seeing what they see.

Where I work, I can only imagine what would happen if the few offices using CS 5.5 saw their familiar GUI change in ways they can't get/don't want to get. If such change is an unavoidable part of the licensing model, I see little/irrelevant benefits, big/significant problems.

To amplify a bit on this, and take it in a slightly different direction... my methodology is that if the software I am currently using does what I need it to do, I feel no compelling reason to change or upgrade it. If someone's current version of CS 5.5 (or whatever) has been doing the job for the past year and the job itself hasn't changed drastically, why would anyone want to start paying a monthly/yearly fee in order to do what has already been paid for? If there were some truly compelling new capabilities in the new software, then he might evaluate whether that single capability were worth the cost. It's hard to imagine what that capability might be.

I upgraded from Microsoft Office 2002 to 2010, because (1) I got the upgrade at a fantastically good price; and more importantly (2) my son, who knows more about Excel than anybody I have ever met convinced me that the new Ribbon Interface and logical structuring of the user interface was greatly superior to the old. I trusted his judgment and upgraded... and hated the ribbon interface. Until, that is, I had spent about six hours with it and understood it, and (as he promised) I would never, ever consider changing back. This rambling discourse is just to point out that yes, sometimes an upgrade is worth the money even if it doesn't increase the capabilities... but I don't think Adobe's "upgrade" (upgrade to their pricing structure, that is) is worth it.

But then, what do I know?

tanstaafl.

Nonsense. Can you imagine, for example, a video editing software getting its design philosophy changed so drastically that it made people hold off from upgrading, or entirely jump ship to a competing platform...

...oh wait...

Seems to me Adobe has a very short memory. They forgot how quickly people were willing to abandon products like these for greener pastures.

Out of curiosity, do any of them use the Autodesk subscription services? Vigil had switched to it and was quite happy, though it seems Adobe's setup is a bit different.

The Autodesk subscriptions reduced the IT staff workload, and also ensured the artists could access the newer versions of 3DS Max easily. Having the latest seemed to be a big goal of both the art and programming tools teams. Inside THQ, there was a lot of tools and code sharing where it made sense, and newer projects would tend to just start on the latest 3DS Max or similar software.

I couldn't say for certain, but I believe the answer is "yes, but not many." I think Autodesk is treading a little more carefully, and doing so in a manner that's a little more palatable. Their subscription services are largely a rebranded support contract, but oh, yeah... with some "cloud" thrown in. The subscription model was almost certainly not originally designed with the entertainment field in mind, given how small a piece of the pie Maya and 3DS are on the corporate balance sheets. The most interesting aspect of it (IMO, from the perspective of VFX) is using the cloud to scale up render power. Some small vfx studios and environment artists are using the services for minor work (scan/photo to model, eg), but they don't (AFAIK) have a huge success story in the industry that they can use for marketing. The biggest issue with "cloud", at least in VFX, is that it's "cloud". The major film studios are increasingly demanding, as part of their contract with VFX studios, that any machine their IP is accessible on, have its internet access curtailed. Naturally, cloud services (even if it's just for the license checks) aren't feasible in that sort of situation.

From an email by an AD employee (who no doubt doesn't have authority to speak for the company, so take this as their opinion):

I suspect by "increased their user base", he meant "increased their paying user base."


That's pretty common, I think. That's how it worked at the studios I was at, as well. Moving an existing show to a new version of a software was pretty much verboten, unless there was a clear and demonstrable need for it, and even then, we only allowed the new software for as few shots or sequences as necessary, to minimize risk to the rest of the project. However, given how frequently (or in-frequently) new software releases came out (as opposed to engineering-release/bug-fix versions), and the rate new projects started up, the regular support contracts and upgrade cycles were sufficient. Instant access to teh latest? Not such a big deal, unless teh latest had a new feature necessary for the show (fluid sims, for example). But even then, at the major studios, you're generally part of the beta test program, and get the betas ahead of release, anyway.

I like Excel 2010. Excel 2013 can die in a fire. I don't like some of the changes they made to it at all.

On the Mac version of Office, you can have the ribbons, the traditional top row of buttons, and/or the separate-window toolbox. Plus you always have the drop-down menus. Pick and choose. Have it your way. This has allowed me to dabble in the ribbons to the point that I understand them without being forced into them.

An update from Adobe about the CC move: http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/our-move-to-creative-cloud-an-update/

So basically they're saying "we're sorry you're upset." The classic non-apology.

I like how they're saying "here are the main concerns we're hearing, and here's the solutions we have for them...oh, wait, they're issues we never even thought about, so we don't know how we're going to fix them yet...watch this space!"

Lame.